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The C.A.S.H. Courier

Autumn 1994 Issue

EVOLUTION IN REVERSE: THE FATAL FLAWS OF THE FOX SQUIRREL SHOOTING SCHEME

By Ron Baker

Is shooting Fox squirrels a biologically and ecologically sound
practice? Many game managers and commercial wildlife biologists would
tell you that it is. The traditional game management philosophy is based
upon the premise that hunters are enhancing the quality of “game”
populations by eliminating a certain percentage of each “game” species
during autumn so that there will be more food, shelter and territory for
those that survive the hunting seasons. But this premise is based upon
false assumptions.

A typical example of the illogic of game management is a plan
formulated by a game manager in Michigan for the “management” of Fox
squirrels. It should be noted that Fox squirrels moved in and, for the
most part, took the place of gray squirrels after the forests in
southern Michigan were logged at the end of the nineteenth century.

The Fox squirrel is smaller than its gray cousin and requires less
food and territory. In a truly “natural” situation in a southern
Michigan climax forest, the Gray squirrel would predominate. As usual,
it was man who compounds this problem with his wildlife “management”
schemes.

According to the game manager, a pair of Fox squirrels will produce a
litter of three each spring. He further claimed that during early
autumn, many young squirrels leave their mothers and try to find
territories of their own. This competition for living space results in
stress on the species. Therefore, according to the game manager, a
well-regulated September hunting season in which hunters would kill
about 40% of the squirrel population would benefit surviving squirrels.
According to him, they would have the food stored by all, be housed in
the best dens, would be subject to less disease and intraspecies
competition. It may sound convincing to a neophyte naturalist but the
truth is that, like other game management practices, the squirrel
hunting scheme is biologically and ecologically unsound, if not
destructive of the species and its ecosystem.

The game management philosophy is perpetuated by commercial wildlife
biologists and game managers whose job it is to expand recreational
hunting and thereby achieve kill statistics as high as each “game”
population can withstand. In other words, they are basing their
recommendations upon a subjective, pre-conceived standard. Their jobs
are not to help wildlife for the sake of wildlife but to maximize
“harvest.” Instead of trying to maintain natural or restored ecosystems
wherever possible, and create conditions conducive to the greatest
diversity of animal life, the solution advocated by game managers is to
use hunting and trapping as theoretical improvements upon intraspecies
and interspecies population dynamics. But this creates many more
problems than it solves. In fact, there is no solution to wildlife
problems that can be imposed through hunting which equals or exceeds
Nature’s method of naturally regulating animal populations.

The management plan assumes that there will be a huge number of young
squirrels suddenly leaving their mother’s dens attempting to establish
territories at the same time. But this doesn’t happen. Litters are not
born at exactly the same times. Usually there’s a 3 or 4-week
differential between the first and last spring births in a particular
geographical area. In some areas, squirrels are born throughout the
spring and most of the summer. Some litters are lost entirely to disease
or parasites. Some young squirrels are eaten by predators; another of
nature’s ways of ensuring that there will not be a hue glut of young
squirrels suddenly seeking territories. While squirrel populations are
cyclic (fluctuating up and down over a period of years in response to
environmental variables), mortality, from whatever causes, usually
occurs at a fairly consistent annual rate, which may peak out during
late winter after squirrels have consumed most of the food from the
previous autumn. In nature, there is seldom a huge die-off of squirrels
at a particular point in time. That occurs only when they are heavily
hunted during autumn. Nature, on the other hand, is relatively well
balanced, while game management by the use of hunting upsets this
equilibrium.

If 40 percent of the Fox squirrels in a particular geographical area
are killed during a hunting season, potential food is taken away from
owls, hawks, foxes, coyotes, fishers, bobcats, martens, etc. With fewer
squirrels during the winter, these predators must locate other prey,
such as snowshoe hares and mice (which also may be low in number during
a particular year, especially where hares have been hunted during autumn
and winter). This reduction of prey species through annual hunting
encourages low predator populations, further disrupting the fragile
ecostructure.

An abrupt kill of many individuals activates nature’s compensation
for a sudden crash – if a Fox squirrel population suffers moderate
losses to hunting during autumn, surviving females will respond to
increases in the sizes and/or numbers of their litters. [Editor’s note:
Compensatory rebound is a phenomenon that wildlife management agencies
take advantage of.] A greater number of females will mate and bear young
to fill the vacuum created by the sudden loses. In nature, animal
populations tend to cycle around or just below the maximum number that a
particular type of habitat can safely support. So the hunting of
squirrels (or any other species) has only short-term validity as a
management tool. It actually maintains or increases game populations,
thereby perpetuating hunting and in process creating many more problems
than it solves.

Will squirrel hunting lessen the incidence of disease? No. Squirrel
hunting is non-selective. The Fox squirrel management plan is a
statistical model which does not take into account many of the variables
found in the real world of nature. No one can predict with certainty
that hunts during a given year will not kill a disproportionate number
of healthy squirrels - those who already have the choicest food and
territory - thereby leaving a large number of stressed or diseased
squirrels with lessened long-term survival potential. Since there is no
way to implement selective squirrel hunting, there is no guarantee that
hunting would not impair the health of the species or result in higher
mortality rates during some years than would be the case without
hunting. Further, there is no proof that the incidence of disease is
related to population size. (Remember that the purported goal of the
management plan is to improve the health of the squirrel population!)

Will it distribute squirrels more evenly over the best habitat? In
order to reduce the squirrel population by 40 percent over a wide
geographical area, there would have to be such a huge number of hunters
and/or bag limits would have to be set so high that the goal would be
unrealistic. Even if the plan were to succeed, hunting pressure and
“harvests” would have to be such that there would be a sparse but
relatively even distribution of squirrels over the best squirrel habitat
after the hunting season; and this would be unlikely to occur. In fact,
most hunters would probably hunt squirrels in areas where they were the
most plentiful – near sources of food in the most favorable habitat.
There would also be a significant amount of acreage that would not be
hunted, for example, some posted lands and private sanctuaries. There
would be higher wintering squirrel populations in these areas than in
areas where they had been hunted, so that the overall objective of a 40
percent reduction on a broad geographical range would not be achieved.

Are they increasing territory and reducing competition? Hunting
pressure and gunshots create stress on squirrels and probably disperse
many to other areas, resulting in temporary displacement and aggressive
behavior as they are forced deep into the territories of others. This
would be exactly the opposite of the hunting plan’s purported goal of
increasing potential territory and reducing competition.

What about the long-term benefits for the species? Are conditions
really improved for “game” animals that survive hunting seasons? That
is, after all, the purported goal.

Will Fox squirrels have more food? There would not necessarily be
more food for survivors because, even assuming a high 40 percent
squirrel kill, some squirrel territories which had good food sources
might remain vacant after hunting seasons and there would be no
guarantee that surviving squirrels would locate the caches of food that
had been stored earlier by those that had been killed by hunters. Many
squirrels bury beechnuts, acorns, seeds from white pine and hemlock
cones, etc. They seem to remember these locations and come back later to
dig them up. Other squirrels would not be as likely to locate most of
these – especially after the ground had been covered by deep snow. And
since most hunters would seek squirrels in areas where there was ample
food (and thus, more squirrels), many survivors would be from peripheral
areas or areas with a less adequate food supply.

Will there be better territory? There would be no guarantee that
surviving squirrels would have the best territories; potential territory
would be increased, but prime habitat is usually limited and a squirrel
can cover only so much acreage in its search for food. While squirrels
sometimes range for a mile or two from their homes, most foraging is
done much closer to their grounds unless food supplies become scarce, or
there is a rich supply of food in another area which is out of their
territories. Moreover, there is no guarantee that a certain percentage
of young squirrels would be able to locate the best territories simply
because 40 percent of the population had been removed by hunters. (And
if there is reasonably good feeding throughout an area, most squirrels
will remain in the general location once they have established
themselves.) So even if the 40 percent hunting losses were evenly
distributed in relation to squirrel density, there would still be more
squirrels in some areas than in others after hunting seasons, and there
would still be some vacant territories.

In nature, the populations of all animal species are controlled by a
complex system of environmental variables: food, territory, shelter,
predators, parasites, disease, intraspecies competition for territory
and mates, etc.

Is the Fox squirrel management plan ethical? Or is any other plan
ethical in which hunting and/or trapping is employed? Supposedly,
hunters are doing animals a service by improving conditions for those
that survive hunting seasons. Hunting takes potential food away from
predators. So the squirrel management plan not only causes squirrels to
die prematurely, it also creates suffering for the animals that feed on
them. We cannot alleviate suffering and death by causing more suffering
and death. Game management deals with groups, not individuals. No
respect is shown for the individual animal, for the animal that is shot
or wounded, or for the predators that die because prey species are
killed by hunters. According to game management philosophy, these
animals are expendable. If we are to call ourselves human beings, then
we should try to prevent unnecessary suffering and death, not encourage
it as a recreational pursuit. If the life of any animal can be reduced
to a statistic, then of what value is life – any life?

Ron Baker is a wildlife biologist and naturalist who is an editor and
contributor to the Backwoods Journal. He homesteads in the Adirondacks
with his wife. He is the author of The American Hunting Myth and is Vice
President of C.A.S.H. He can be reached through C.A.S.H.